110v off 220v line

Found this forum doing a toilet project and had a lot of questions answered for me. Great forum 1st post.

The original owner of my house was an electrician so I never thought about the wiring too much assuming everything was done right and good to go. I found this the other day and it just doesn't look right. In the laundry room is a junction box for the 220v lines for the dryer. Inside the box are also 110v lines to lights and outlets. The 110 lines are connected to the 220v via wire nut. This seems so wrong to me since the 110 lines have no way to trip a breaker in the event of something happening.

Is this set up wrong, or am I looking at it wrong. The dryer is gas just in case your wondering

The "feed" lines go through the dryer circuit's breakers so they WOULD trip it, but the real question is whether the breaker is still the 30 amp 2 pole or was it changed to a 15 or 20 amp breaker, (single pole or double pole is somewhat irrelevent).

If you change the breaker to say a 20A, dual-pole one, you can create what is called a shared neutral circuit and get two separate 110vac branches. As the name implies, the two circuits share the neutral, but that's okay since the phases are opposite, and when both legs are fully loaded, the actual load on the neutral is zero since it cancels. Search on 'shared neutral' and you'll get some further explanation, if required.

Without taking a bunch of nuts and wires off it appears to me that the wires are 10 gauge (blues, red, and white, no bare). I have a very short run in the ceiling above the circuit breaker that is finished, so running new line would be relatively easy. If I went with the dual pole breaker route is it ok to run smaller gauge wire (12 or 14) off the heavier gauge at a junction box.

It depends on HOW you mean that. A #10 can be connected to a 15 or 20 amp breaker, and the continue as a #14 or #12 without creating a hazardous condition. BUT, you cannot connect a smaller wire than the breaker is rated for.